De samenvatting luidt:
'A more complete understanding of the Dalai Lama’s intellectual milieu and mental framework serves to contextualize and appraise his contributions to the discourse on Buddhism and Science in general, and the so-called Mind and Life Dialogues in particular. In addition to providing indispensable background information, a fuller expression of his foundational views and motives sheds light upon the idiosyncratic way the Dalai Lama engages new fields of knowledge. Thanks to the Dialogues’ format and the transparency of the Dalai Lama’s scholastic mentality, the way in which Mind and Life participants meet various challenges in practice offers enough traction to retrieve and critically appraise real-time patterns of engagement and innovation. This should prove to be instrumental in determining the Dialogues’ measure of success, at least by its own standards and stated purpose. Following this approach, the Dalai Lama’s long-time use of a proviso derived from Tsongkhapa’s reading of Middle Way philosophy as a methodological distinction that delineates the scope of Science warrants specific attention. '
(Bron: www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/5/3/522 )

Twee belangrijke bijdragen die het boeddhisme kan leveren aan de wetenschap:
'The first would be the unification of subjective and objective perspectives on conscious experience. In effect, this amounts to the integration of first-person, experiential findings derived from Buddhist meditative practice with third-person, empirical data of cognitive and affective neuroscience. Such integration, Varela thought, would provide researchers with a new, improved frame of reference to interpret and test their observations.
Varela felt that the meeting of Buddhism and Science holds a great promise of fundamental,
constructive changes in the way scientists conceive of long-standing problems. At a fundamental level, he wrote, Buddhist thought affords a view of the material universe that has no counterpart in the philosophical heritage of the West.
As a second contribution, therefore, a sustained exchange with the Dalai Lama and other Buddhist contemplatives on the foundations of physics would have scientists rethink their logical and epistemological repertoire. This should help overcome the conundrums that confront, for instance, theoretical physicists involved in the attempt to describe all physical forces in a single, unified theory .'

Hogendoorn citeert de Dalai Lama in een artikel uit 2005, de DL schreef:
“Popper’s falsifiability thesis resonates with a major methodological principle in my own
Tibetan Buddhist philosophical tradition. We might call this the “principle of the scope of
the negation”. This principle states that there is a fundamental difference between that
which is “not found” and that which is found “not to exist”. If I look for something and fail
to find it, this does not mean that the thing I am seeking does not exist. Not seeing a thing
is not the same as seeing its non-existence. In order for there to be a coincidence between
not seeing a thing and seeing its non-existence, the method of searching and the
phenomenon being sought must be commensurate. ” (par. 12)
Volgens mij zou Popper het geheel niet met de Dalai Lama eens zijn m.b.t. dit citaat.
Ik denk zelfs dat de DL weinig van de wetenschapstheorie van Popper heeft begrepen.
Hij zou bijvoorbeeld veel gehad hebben aan dit heldere Wikipedia artikel .

'Biology' is voor hem vooral de grote biologie, met name de evolutietheorie (die ik hier niet probeer samen te vatten). Niet het makkelijkste wetenschappelijke thema om met het boeddhisme te vergelijken!
Omdat ik het boek nog niet uit heb en het toch al lastig vind zoveel informatie samen te vatten, een aantal citaten uit dit artikel.
“ People who follow ecological thinking (including some of our hardest-headed scientists) might not realise that they are also embracing an ancient spiritual tradition. Many who espouse Buddhism might not realise that they are also endorsing a world view with political implications that go beyond bumper stickers demanding a free Tibet.
Plenty of us recognise that Buddhist writings and teachings — especially in their Zen manifestation — celebrate the beauty and wisdom in the natural world. ...
...
The pioneering ecologist Aldo Leopold wrote that to have an ecological conscience is to ‘live alone in a world of wounds’. The Buddha urged his followers to be sensitive to the suffering of all sentient beings. His First Precept is to commit oneself to ahimsa, or nonharming. The Mahayana Buddhist ideal is to go further, and to become a bodhisattva, an enlightened individual who vows to relieve the suffering of all beings. In the ‘Metta Sutta’, Theravada monks and lay adherents vow to practise loving kindness: ‘Even as a mother protects with her life her child, her only child, so with a boundless heart should one cherish all living beings.’ And here is the first verse of ‘The Bodhisattva Path’, by Shantideva, a revered eighth-century poet: ‘May I be the doctor and the medicine/And may I be the nurse/For all sick beings in the world/Until everyone is healed.’
However, for me, as a scientist, there is something much more in the Buddhist tradition than an injunction to care for other living things. This meeting of the minds, Buddhist and ecological, results from similar insights into the nature of reality itself — which is indistinguishable from the reality of nature — and of our place in the whole business.
…
The interconnected and interdependent nature of things is the heart of ecology. It is also remarkably similar to the fundamental insight of Buddhism: ‘dependent co-arising’ or pratītyasamutpāda in Sanskrit; paticcasamuppāda in Pali. Traditional Tibetan Buddhists repeat, over and over, that all things have at some time been our mothers, just as we have at some time been theirs. In both the Theravada and Mahayana schools of Buddhism, the key teaching is ‘compassion’, which means something quite different from empathy, sympathy, doing good, being nice, or easy phrases about ‘feeling your pain’.
The touchstone, instead, is a Buddhist idea that is among the most difficult for Westerners to accept: the concept of anatman, or ‘no-self’. … Each of us arises in conjunction with others, dependent on and inseparable from those others. Trying to locate an inviolate particle of selfhood within anyone (or indeed, in any living thing) is not like finding a solid pit inside an apricot. It is more like peeling an onion: we are layers within layers, with nothing at the centre. Or, like an eddy in a river, each of us can be identified and pointed to, but nonetheless, there isn’t any persistent ‘us’: just a constantly moving pattern of flow, with everyone composed entirely of non-self stuff, all of it passing through. For Buddhists and ecologists alike, we are all created from spare parts scavenged from the same cosmic junk-heap, from which ‘our’ component atoms and molecules are on temporary loan, and to which they will eventually be recycled.
So our existence is not a distinct and separable phenomenon. ... For ecologists, no less than for poets or Buddhists, it is the fundamental rule, whether you call it connectedness, inseparability or, in the language of science, food webs, trophic levels, and community interactions.
...
Everything, it seems, is connected; the Buddha would understand. All the same, we shouldn't assume that the parallels between Buddhism and ecology are too exact, with either one mapping readily and completely onto the other. For me — an unrepentantly atheist scientist — there are many aspects of Buddhist tradition that seem downright ridiculous.
High on the list of such absurdities are the phenomena of iddhi, supernatural events that are supposed to be generated by extremely skilful and committed meditation. They appear often in Buddhist texts, and I don’t believe a word of them. Higher meditators are claimed to possess various supernatural abilities, becoming invisible on demand, walking through walls, on water, through the air, hearing people and other beings very far away, mind-reading, recalling past lives, even possessing ‘divine eyes’ that permit them to see the arising and passing away of karma.
...
Traditional Buddhist cosmology is very complex, and more than a little weird, with the world composed of 31 levels, the lowest being a kind of hell, followed in turn by animals, ghosts, titans, humans, five different tiers of lesser gods, 15 of higher gods, after which one encounters, in turn, ‘infinite space’, ‘infinite consciousness’, ‘nothingness’, and finally ‘neither perception nor non-perception’. The Dalai Lama (a self-proclaimed admirer of Western science) has recently admitted that he no longer believes all that business about the world being flat with a great mountain — Mount Meru — at its centre. I don’t know about the beliefs of other leading Buddhists in this regard.
Neither is ‘Buddhism’ a monolithic whole. Some argue that ‘real’ Buddhism should be based on the early teachings of the Pali canon. But this is quite different from the Buddhism whose vision is so similar to modern ecology. The historical Buddha seems to have been more concerned with ending human suffering and encouraging individual enlightenment than with promoting environmental sensitivity. Instead of revelling in connectedness, early Buddhist thought focused on the downside of being ‘misled’ in maya, the illusory sense of the material world’s importance.
…
To be sure, the science of ecology is divided as well: ecology has a double meaning, being used to refer both to the quantitative science and to a broad sense of ethical responsibility towards a complex natural world.
Even so, there are many striking and subtle connections between Buddhist metaphysics and ethics on the one hand and an ecological orientation on the other. Modern Buddhism, especially as promoted and practised in the West, has undergone something of an intellectual makeover. It now places more emphasis on social and environmental responsibility than the Buddha or his immediate followers seem to have favoured — perhaps in part due to the influence of Zen.
…
Ecology was traditionally defined as the study of the interrelations between organisms and their environments, which is still somewhat dualistic. Significantly, ecologists now modify this definition to emphasise the fundamental identity of subject and surroundings. We cannot separate the bison from the prairie or the spotted owl from its coniferous forest. Since any such distinction is arbitrary, the ecologist studies the bison-prairie, owl-forest unit. Food webs, such as those connecting mouse, acorn and gipsy moth, are not mere descriptions of who-eats-whom, but outlines of their very being. The Buddhist suggestion that an organism’s skin does not separate it from its environment but, rather, joins the two, could just as well have come from a ‘master’ of physiological ecology.
...
Not surprisingly, verbal analysis, with its unavoidable linearity, is inadequate for ecologists just as it has long been disdained by Buddhist masters. Where the Buddhist master plays with poetic imagery, the ecological imagination turns to modelling and metaphors of its own.
Ecology is many things: a science, a world view, a cautionary tale. It can be nearly incomprehensible in its mathematical thickets, downright tedious in its verbal pomposity, theoretically abstruse yet dirty-under-the-fingernails practical, often ignored and derided although desperately needed as a voice for basic planetary hygiene and a practical corrective to human hubris. It has been called the ‘subversive science’, since it subverts our egocentric insistence on separateness, and with it, our inclination to ride roughshod over the rest of the natural world. Buddhism is no less subversive, its ecological implications in particular carrying the serious practitioner far beyond giddy adoration of the Dalai Lama, or a fascination with celebrity Buddhists such as Richard Gere. “

Het begint aldus: “Some curious students of contemporary Buddhism will be familiar with the ongoing dialogue between Buddhism and science. Events like the 'Mind and Life' conferences put high-profile scientists in selfies with the Dalai Lama and other well-known Buddhists. While psychology, neurology, and physics have tended to be the disciplines most featured in such prestigious conferences, Dr. Barash’s Buddhist Biology attempts to add biology to this interesting discussion. Though many of the questions he asks are undeniably fascinating and profound, his overall approach seems ill suited to the task.
Before we go into a critique, Barash should be given credit where it is due. He is a buoyant, colorful and playful writer and doesn’t flinch when tackling complex questions. Additionally, his vocal call for human beings to take responsibility for their effect on the planet reveals his overwhelmingly positive motivation. He sees in Buddhism the potential to ground the insights of biology in a way that highlights human moral imperatives. He does a good job of highlighting the sheer wonder of our world and the reader can really feel how much he loves our Earth.
But as a rule, Barash does not entertain discussion on anything that falls outside the bounderies of his worldview. His downright ornery insistence on what he calls the “natural, the real, the material” makes it difficult for him to appreciate the methodology of the Buddhist tradition.”

God is a concept . . . John Lennon

God is a concept
By which we measure
Our pain
I'll say it again
God is a concept
By which we measure
Our pain

I don't believe in magic
I don't believe in I-ching
I don't believe in Bible
I don't believe in tarot
I don't believe in Hitler
I don't believe in Jesus
I don't believe in Kennedy
I don't believe in Buddha
I don't believe in Mantra
I don't believe in Gita
I don't believe in Yoga
I don't believe in kings
I don't believe in Elvis
I don't believe in Zimmerman
I don't believe in Beatles
I just believe in me
Yoko and me
And that's reality

The dream is over
What can I say?
The dream is over
Yesterday
I was the Dreamweaver
But now I'm reborn
I was the Walrus
But now I'm John
And so dear friends
You'll just have to carry on
The dream is over